Our solar system’s second known interstellar visitor doesn’t seem to be
in one piece anymore.
Photos of the interstellar Comet
Borisov taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope on March
28 and March 30 show an elongated nucleus that appears to have two distinct
components, astronomers announced in a note
Thursday (April 2). That’s a very different situation
than the one Hubble observed on March 23, when the nucleus was a single entity.
These two pieces are about equally bright, but
that doesn’t mean they’re of equivalent size, said UCLA astronomer David
Jewitt, who led the new observations
“Actually, it
turns out almost never to be that case,” Jewitt told Space.com, referring to
similar observations of native-born comets.
“Usually, the
main nucleus drops off a piece, and the piece is small compared to the main
nucleus — it contains a tiny fraction of the total mass,” he said. “But,
because it was just plucked out of the nucleus, it’s pretty icy. And the ice
fizzes and sublimates like crazy, making it a good producer of dust.”
Read the article: https://www.space.com/interstellar-comet-borisov-two-pieces.html?utm_source=notification
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